PARIS: Rainfall 10 times heavier than usual caused Pakistan’s devastatingfloods, the European Space Agency said Thursday, as it released satelliteimages of a vast lake created by the overflowing Indus river.

Rains, described by UN chief Antonio Guterres as a “monsoon on steroids”have claimed hundreds of lives since June, unleashing powerful floods thathave washed away swathes of vital crops and damaged or destroyed more thana million homes.

Data from the EU’s Copernicus satellite has been used to map the scale ofthe deluge from space to help the rescue efforts, the ESA said in astatement.

“Heavy monsoon rainfall – ten times heavier than usual – since mid-Junehave led to more than a third of the country now being underwater,” it said.

The agency released images from the satellite showing an area where theIndus River has overflowed “effectively creating a long lake, tens ofkilometres wide”, between the cities of Dera Murad Jamali and Larkana.

[image: This aerial photograph shows a flooded residential area after heavymonsoon rains in Dadu district of Sindh province.-AFP]This aerial photograph shows a flooded residential area after heavy monsoonrains in Dadu district of Sindh province.-AFP

Officials say more than 33 million people are affected – one in every sevenPakistanis – and reconstruction work will cost more than $10 billion.

Guterres has called the floods a “climate catastrophe” and launched anappeal for $160 million in emergency funding.

While it is too early to quantify the contribution of global warming in thefloods, scientists say the rains are broadly consistent with expectationsthat climate change will make the Indian monsoon wetter.

A recent study, based on climate models, predicted that exceptionally wetmonsoons in the Indian subcontinent would become six times more likelyduring the 21st century, even if humanity rachets down carbon emissions.